Feather Legged Fly

Feather Legged Fly Images ,Date ,Time ,Location
Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 9:03 AM
Hi Bugman
I spotted this neat looking bug on a hibiscus in my backyard on July 14 ,2008 at 10:31a.m.
It was just buzzing around and landing on the leafs – not on the orange and yellow flowers. This is the first time I ever saw this kind of bug and have not seen one since. I thought it might
be a wierd species of wasp because of the abdomen. It has a really beautiful color of orange and these wierd looking combs on it’s legs.
Thank’s Once Again! & Have a Great Day!
Brent Hansen
Pinellas County ,Florida

Feather Legged Fly

Hi Brent,
Thanks so much for allowing us to post your image of a Feather Footed Fly, Trichopoda pennipes. The solid orange abdomen indicates that this is a male Feather Footed Fly. Feather Legged Flies are Tachinid Flies in the family Tachinidae. Here is what BugGuide has to say about this species: “Adult female lays one to several eggs on a hemipteran host. The larvae hatch from the eggs and burrow directly into the bug’s body, though only one larva will survive within each host. The larva feeds on the host internally and eventually a large cream-colored maggot exits from body of the bug (which soon dies). The maggot pupates in a dark reddish-brown puparium in the soil and emerges as an adult about two weeks later. There are up to three generations a year depending on location, and larvae may overwinter in the bodies of overwintering hosts. “We will try to assist you in the identification of other unidentified insects on your website when we have an opportunity. Right now, we are trying to subcategorize our own archives and it is quite a daunting task. Since our site migration, we are trying to learn all the nuances for posting information that are now available to us. It has taken us weeks (we haven’t much spare time) to partially subcategorize 36 pages of our 81 pages of beetle postings. We now realize the subcategorization needs to be more extensive and will need to start at the beginning again, but not until we finish the current task. After that, we plan to further subcategorize True Bugs, Butterflies, Caterpillars and Spiders. The problem is that this “busy work” interferes with our precious posting time of new submissions.